The Dhobi is considered to be impure, and he is not allowed
to come into the houses of the better castes nor to touch their
water-vessels. In Saugor he may come as far as the veranda but not into
the house. His status would in any case be low as a village menial, but
he is specially degraded, Mr. Crooke states, by his task of washing the
clothes of women after child-birth and his consequent association with
puerperal blood, which is particularly abhorred. Formerly a Brahman
did not let the Dhobi wash his clothes, or, if he did, they were
again steeped in water in the house as a means of purification. Now
he contents himself with sprinkling the clean clothes with water in
which a piece of gold has been dipped. The Dhobi is not so impure as
the Chamar and Basor, and if a member of the higher castes touches
him inadvertently it is considered sufficient to wash the face and
hands only and not the clothes.
Colonel Tod writes [553] that in Rajputana the washermen's wells dug at
the sides of streams are deemed the most impure of all receptacles. And
one of the most binding oaths is that a man as he swears should drop
a pebble into one of these wells, saying, "If I break this oath may
all the good deeds of my forefathers fall into the washerman's well
like this pebble." Nevertheless the Dhobi refuses to wash the clothes
of some of the lowest castes as the Mang, Mahar and Chamar. Like
the Teli the Dhobi is unlucky, and it is a bad omen to see him when
starting on a journey or going out in the morning. But among some of
the higher castes on the occasion of a marriage the elder members of
the bridegroom's family go with the bride to the Dhobi's house. His
wife presents the bride with betel-leaf and in return is given clothes
with a rupee. This ceremony is called _sohag_ or good fortune, and
the present from the Dhobin is supposed to be lucky. In Berar the
Dhobi is also a Balutedar or village servant. Mr. Kitts writes of him:
[554] "At a wedding he is called upon to spread the clothes on which
the bridegroom and his party alight on coming to the bride's house;
he also provides the cloth on which the bride and bridegroom are to
sit and fastens the _kankan_ (bracelet) on the girl's hand. In the
Yeotmal District the barber and the washerman sometimes take the place
of the maternal uncle in the _jhenda_ dance; and when the bridegroom,
assisted by five married women, has thrown the necklace of black beads
round the bride's neck and has tied it with five knots, the barber
and the washerman advance, and lifting the young couple on their
thighs dance to the music of the _wajantri_, while the bystanders
besprinkle them with red powder."
In Chhattisgarh the Dhobis appear to have partly abandoned
their hereditary profession and taken to agriculture and other
callings. Sir Benjamin Robertson writes of them: [555] "The caste
largely preponderates in Chhattisgarh, a part of the country where,
at least to the superficial observer, it would hardly seem as if its
services were much availed of; the number of Dhobis in Raipur and
Bilaspur is nearly 40,000. In both Districts the washerman is one
of the recognised village servants, but as a rule he gets no fixed
payment, and the great body of cultivators dispense with his services
altogether. According to the _Raipur Settlement Report_ (Mr. Hewett),
he is employed by the ryots only to wash the clothes of the dead, and
he is never found among a population of Satnamis. It may therefore
be assumed that in Chhattisgarh the Bareth caste has largely taken
to cultivation." In Bengal Sir H. Risley states [556] that "the Dhobi
often gives up his caste trade and follows the profession of a writer,
messenger or collector of rent (_tahsildar_), and it is an old native
tradition that a Bengali Dhobi was the first interpreter the English
factory at Calcutta had, while it is further stated that our early
commercial transactions were carried on solely through the agency of
low-caste natives. The Dhobi, however, will never engage himself as
an indoor servant in the house of a European."